Laser Ablation of a Polymer Electro-Optic Modulator

An electro-optic polymer-based Mach-Zehnder (M-Z) modulator is designed and fabricated for the 1550-nm telecom wavelength. The structures in the polymer films are patterned with micrometer resolution using a krypton fluoride excimer laser. This ensures that we can operate in the singlemode regime. We also present a new method for measuring the attenuation of the polymer waveguides by using waveguides of different lengths on the same substrate. While we have not optimized some parameters involved in the process, we have achieved a switching voltage V
_π
of 80 V for a 20-mm long active region of the M-Z interferometer and a r
₃₃
coefficient of 2.9 pm/V using 25% polycarbonate/DR1 chromophore.